NBC, AFP: Say, Why Are The Wealthiest Nations “Hoarding” Half Of COVID-19 Vaccine Doses?

[PeteS in CA]

NBC, AFP: Say, Why Are The Wealthiest Nations “Hoarding” Half Of COVID-19 Vaccine Doses?

https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/12/16/nbc-afp-say-wealthiest-nations-hoarding-half-covid-19-vaccine-doses/

... AFP reported last night that some of the poorer nations might not get a vaccine before 2022, thanks to production/sales commitments made to wealthier nations. See if you can spot what’s missing in this lead:

At least a fifth of the world’s population may not have access to a Covid-19 vaccine until 2022, according to a study published Wednesday, with wealthier nations reserving more than half of next year’s potential doses.
...
Wealthy nations — accounting for just 14 percent of the global population — have pre-ordered just over half of the vaccine doses expected to be produced by the 13 leading developers next year, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found.

NBC News followed up this morning with a similar complaint. Rich nations like the US are “hoarding” doses of the vaccine, according to their headline:

The U.S., Canada, Britain and the European Union have pre-ordered enough Covid-19 shots to inoculate their populations several times over, subject to regulatory approvals.

In this critical game of medicine logistics — where supply is small but demand immediate and universal — campaigners and some officials accuse these wealthy nations of snapping up orders and hoarding more than they need.

...
But even that is a minor issue in a profoundly dishonest approach by both NBC and AFP. These nations didn’t “snap up” vaccines by elbowing their way into line. The reason these vaccines will exist at all in 2022 is because the wealthier nations pumped billions and billions of dollars into the pharmaceutical companies in order to accelerate their development. The fastest development cycle for a vaccine before this was four years, and that was for mumps in the early 60s.

The nations that did this bought tens and hundreds of millions of doses up front without even knowing whether they would be safe or effective ... They accelerated reviews and approval processes to make R&D less costly for the pharmas, also enhancing their speed to final product. That was the entire purpose of Operation Warp Speed, a multibillion-dollar gamble by Americans in the hope of accelerating the path to an effective vaccine. Other countries, notably the UK and Germany, put similar strategies in place with the same goal. Those efforts are the reason why a vaccine exists at all, and likely why it exists before 2022, too. The nations that took the financial risks of that moonshot should benefit from their investment ... .

Nowhere in the AFP or NBC reports does this extraordinary program even get a mention. That’s stunningly dishonest, and it’s tough to conclude anything other than these news agencies made the deliberate choice to exclude that information from its readers. They wanted a wealthy-nations-are-greedy narrative rather than wealthy-nations-invested-in-success narrative, and so they cooked the story to make sure they got the narrative they wanted.

I can't speak for other countries' early purchase contracts, but those written under OWS all were contingent on the several vaccines receiving Emergency Use Authorization. IOW the $$ wasn't going to go down the drain should a vaccine fail to pass, but the contracts were/are of a magnitude great enough to reward the vaccine manufacturers for their investments and effort, a guaranteed reward for success.

Another hole in the media people's guilt-tripping is that it ASSumes production of these vaccines is fixed. In reality the several vaccine companies have, are, and will be licensing other companies in less prosperous countries to produce their vaccines. Potential production is not infinite, but the media ASSumption that it will not grow considerably is dumb and dishonest.

[catfish1957]

Maybe they can set up a petition and inventory of the altruistic folks who can volunteer and send their vax to Timbuktu.

Wonder how long that list would be?

[cato potatoe]

They are prioritizing the vaccine because they have elderly people.  Why would sub-saharan Africa be vaccinated, when their life expectancy is only 61?

[PeteS in CA]

Thinking past the media's class-envy red herring, let's pretend that the hypothetical third-world country Elbonia gets the vaccine doses to vaccinate half its population:

* Does Elbonia have the regionally located storage facilities that can store the several vaccines at the temperatures they need to be stable for a significant period of time?

* Does Elbonia have the temperature controlled trucks that can maintain the several vaccines at the temperatures they need to be stable during transport?

* Does Elbonia have the medical facilities in the many cities and towns that can properly store the vaccines and people trained to handle and prepare the shots?

* Does Elbonia have the medical/pharmacy people with the training to administer the vaccinations properly and observe the recipients for a reasonable time period for adverse reactions?

The Pfizer vaccine must be stored and transported at the temperature of dry ice - relatively easy in the US or EuroLand, but much less easy in a third world country. The Moderna vaccine is more forgiving, best stored at ordinary freezer temperatures, but in a third world country where freezers are not in every household and power is unreliable (if available)? As the OP article mentions (IIRC), the AstraZeneca vaccine - refrigerator storage temps - is better suited to third world usage, though probably at best it will be the third vaccine to receive FDA EUA, IOW a month or two from now.